


staying awake

by aohatsu



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Clothed Sex, Clothing Kink, Desk Sex, First Kiss, First Time, Friends to Lovers, Frottage, Getting Together, Grief/Mourning, Holding Hands, Huddling For Warmth, Hugs, Hurt/Comfort, IN SPACE!, Injury Recovery, Kissing, M/M, Major Character Injury, Oral Sex, Pining, Rescue, Sharing a Bed, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-08-09
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:34:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25354075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aohatsu/pseuds/aohatsu
Summary: The ship has four days, maybe, of power left. The nearest inhabitable planet is at least seven days away unless they can increase their speed, but the engines are shot, puttering along on the power of desperation and misguided hope.Even if Nebula doesn’t take her fair share of the food, between him and the kid, they’ll run out in two.
Relationships: Peter Parker/Tony Stark
Comments: 16
Kudos: 293
Collections: Battleship 2020, Battleship 2020 - Red Team





	staying awake

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LearnedFoot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LearnedFoot/gifts).



“Give it to the kid,” Tony says, barely glancing at Nebula while trying to ignore the way the ship seems to shudder under his feet. Either the ship is shaking, or he is, and neither situation is good.

“He has already had his portion.”

Nebula pushes the yellow and orange fruit toward him again, and she’s strong enough and Tony weak enough that when she wraps his hand around it, he isn’t quick enough to pull away. He stares at the fruit, vegetable, whatever it is, and wishes, not for the first time, that he’d been able to fix the ship.

To get that gauntlet off of Thanos’ hand.

To keep Peter off the ship in the first place.

He lets out a long breath. Shit. _Shit_.

The ship has four days, maybe, of power left. The nearest inhabitable planet is at least seven days away unless they can increase their speed, but the engines are shot, puttering along on the power of desperation and misguided hope.

Even if Nebula doesn’t take her fair share of the food, between him and the kid, they’ll run out in two.

Unless Tony stops eating his share too—then the kid will have four, enough to get him to that planet and—

 _Shit_. The planet might be inhabitable, but who knows what sort of _inhabitants_ it already has. Nebula’s already said she doesn’t know, just that the air is breathable for humans. It could be full of monsters—humanoid or not—that Peter is in no way prepared to deal with. Hell, there might not be food digestible for humans available even if they get there and the locals throw them a welcome parade. He can’t force the kid to deal with that on his own, let alone with the dead body of his mentor along for the ride.

Tony lifts the fruit to his mouth and takes a bite, grimacing at the sour taste.

His hands are shaking, and his breath is visible in the cold air.

“The boy is sleeping,” Nebula says, after a long moment they spend staring out the front of the ship, glass revealing the wide-open pitch black of space, a scene straight out of Tony’s dreams. (Nightmares. Dreams. Is there a difference anymore? He isn’t sure. Even when Peter’s there, it feels like a goddamn nightmare when he wakes.)

Nebula has this way of speaking, taking all emotion out of a statement. Still, Tony knows she’s worried. It’s the third time she’s brought it up, and Tony’s worried too. Peter’s been sleeping a lot, and when he’s awake, he’s shivering even with every spare blanket on the ship wrapped around his shoulders, slow to eat and slower to respond to conversation.

Tony stopped him from helping to work on the ship two days ago when Peter had stared too long at the wiring as if he couldn’t understand what exactly it was that he was looking at. The way he barely put up a token protest before falling asleep in the pilot’s chair was another sign of just how sick he is.

The problem is that Tony has no way to find out what’s wrong with him, let alone find out if he’s going to keep getting worse.

“He should rest while he can. It’s not like there’s much else to do on this hunk of junk,” Tony says, slapping his knees and trying to disguise the way his pulse is just a bit too quick.

There has to be something he can do. But there isn’t. There’s nothing, absolutely nothing, that he can do to save Peter’s life.

He’s led the kid into space; into a fight with an alien that they didn’t win. He’s led the kid to his death, and it’s a slow, agonizingly miserable death at that, sitting around, sleeping, rationing their food and waiting for the lights to go out, for the heater to stop, for the jets to give up and quit puttering along.

They’re waiting to die.

Peter is the only one who keeps smiling, laughing when he’s awake, like he’s sure they’ll make it back to Earth.

(“You’ll get us back,” Peter had mumbled through a yawn, tugging a blanket covered in leaves and twigs up and under his chin. Tony had grinned at him and said, “Yeah, alien spaceship. Easy fix.”)

It hadn’t been easy. It hadn’t even been _possible_.

At least he hasn’t had to see the realization sink into Peter’s face yet. The kid still, however naively, thinks that Tony Stark™ can get them home, thinks that he’ll pull a solution out of his ass and save the day. Tony’s living in a desperate quicksand of space-time, hoping he’ll never see it. Hoping, somehow, the kid will have this epiphany where Tony doesn’t have to see it darken his eyes.

Peter wakes up a few hours later. They play table football with a piece of tinfoil, Nebula gradually learning the game with just a hint of a smile poking through when she finally wins. Tony isn’t about to bring it up as a conversation starter, but he gets the feeling Thanos wasn’t big on family game night.

Peter falls asleep at the table again, bags under his eyes the color of the bruising that Tony associates with 72-hour lab binges, despite the fact that he’s sleeping fourteen, sixteen hours a day. It has to be something to do with his abilities, some side-effect from being in space for too long. There’s not much Tony can do about it—there’s no way to turn the heat up, no way to magic up a pizza, no way to test his blood for exactly what’s going on and order in a heap of vitamins.

Nebula carries Peter to the lone bed on the ship that isn’t in shambles—the one covered in bits and pieces of what Nebula informs him, without the slightest hint of amusement from a well-told joke, is a teenage sentient tree with hygiene issues (can trees have hygiene issues?)—and lays him down. Tony follows her, leaning against the doorway.

God, he wishes he knew what to do.

“You should sleep as well,” she says, after a moment. “I will watch the ship.”

There’s no point in arguing. Even if he did, there’s nothing to stay awake for. It’s a waiting game and they’re not waiting for anything good. He nods, and she moves past him, touching his shoulder shortly before the door to the room shuts.

It’s too cold to shuck any of his clothes, so he climbs in next to Peter fully-dressed and, despite his better judgment, curls in close to him. Peter’s breath comes out in little puffs, warm against the skin, and Tony closes his eyes to the feeling of Peter being close enough to touch.

Maybe, if he sleeps, he’ll wake up with an answer to somehow get Peter out of this alive.

He doesn’t dream.

There are no nightmares of the deep vastness of space (he’s already in it), no nightmares of all his friends dying (they already have). There are no dreams of being home in the lab and working on new tech or of being warm in his bed with Peter softly laughing (gasping, crying out, “Mr. Stark—") in turns.

He wakes up.

Peter has crawled in closer, his body naturally seeking out the warmth Tony’s is giving off. For a minute, Tony stares at the ceiling of the ship. He won’t be able to get back to sleep, but is there even a point in getting up? Peter is comfortable; soft and warm and tangibly there, ostensibly safe if just for this moment.

If he’s going to die, in his most selfish of dreams, this is where he would want to be.

It takes him too long, absorbed in his own thoughts, to realize that Peter is barely breathing against him. He sits up quickly when Peter’s terrifying stillness catches his attention, nausea and fear dropping through him like he’s being plunged into a dirty barrel of water headfirst all over again. He grabs Peter’s shoulder hard enough to bruise, shaking Peter's entire upper torso as words finally find their way out of his throat, “Kid! Pete! Wake up!”

A long, breath-taking moment, and then—“Mr. Stark?”

His voice is soft and quiet, weak and groggy. Peter lifts an arm like he’s going to reach out but drops it back to the bed instead. “Tired,” he mumbles, and shifts like he’s going to go back to sleep.

“Kid, hey, no, stay awake,” Tony begs, voice too rough, breaking in the middle as he swallows.

Tony looks up at the sound of footsteps; Nebula is at the door, standing awkwardly and watching them.

“Is he dying?” she asks, straight to the point.

“Sleeping,” Peter denies, but it’s so soft Tony isn’t sure Nebula could have heard it. He burrows his face into Tony’s chest, and Tony can feel his body go even looser as he slips back into sleep. Tony wants to shake him again, wants to force him to stay awake, all wide-eyed and full of pop culture references that make Tony feel eighty instead of forty-nine.

“Is this something your species does?” Nebula asks after a moment. She crosses her arms. “Sleep when it is too cold?”

“No,” Tony snaps, but then pauses.

Last Christmas, Peter had stayed at the compound over his school break for four days while his aunt had gone on a trip to Florida with some of her friends. He’d been happy and excited the whole time, but he’d fallen asleep on the sofa at least three separate times and never seemed to finish a meal. He’d asked for a jacket when Tony had prompted him for gift ideas, expecting a request for a car or a new suit.

He’d wanted a new jacket because his old one wasn’t warm enough.

Tony had put it down to the kid not wanting to overstep, or maybe his natural selflessness shining through. Steve had been the same way, always saying, “Practical gifts, Tony, practical,” like it was a chore to try and reign Tony in. Tony knew he went overboard sometimes—so he’d nodded and got the kid a jacket, one with an in-built heater that you could shift the temperature of by vocal command—and a set of matching hat, scarf and gloves too, because he could and one jacket was a meager Christmas by anyone’s standards.

Peter had been ecstatic when he’d pulled it on.

Actually, he’d worn it the entire time he’d been at the compound, and every time Tony had seen him afterward that winter until spring had come along and it’d been too hot for layering.

He looks at Peter, face soft in sleep, breathing slowly and huddled under the blanket to keep away from the cold air. He glances up at Nebula, still standing there by the door.

“It’s possible,” he says, finally. “Peter’s abilities come from a—I don’t know if you’ve heard of them. Spiders?”

Nebula stares blankly. Tony sighs. “They’re arachnids. Uh, sort of like bugs. You know what bugs are, right?” She nods, her eyes narrowing. Tony clears his throat. “Anyway, spiders. They die or hibernate in winter, usually. Peter might be feeling tired because it’s too cold on the ship.”

Nebula nods, slowly, and then repeats her earlier question. “Is he dying?”

Tony lets out a long, slow breath.

No.

He closes his eyes, tightening his grip on Peter’s shoulder. He had never quite let go.

“I don’t think so,” he says, finally, because even if he is—even if Peter is dying, there is absolutely nothing he can do about it.

Tony stays in the bed for as long as he can. When he gets up, it’s to relieve himself and find something for his hands to fiddle with. There’s plenty of alien tech on the ship, and a Zune filled with music from the nineties of all things. Peter had liked it, always a fan of retro tech even if he didn’t have to dumpster dive anymore, having realized Tony would give him a new phone or tablet if he’d just mention wanting one somewhere Karen could overhear and tell F.R.I.D.A.Y. (Which is, similarly, how he’d ended up with a three grand pair of shoes he refused to wear because, “What if I step on gum or something!?” and too many Lego sets to actually fit in his room at his aunt’s apartment according to an angry phone call telling him to “Quit buying my nephew giant Lego sets! Our apartment is not a _toy store_!”)

He ends up working in the guts of the ship again, looking for something—anything—he might have missed the first hundred times he’d looked around. He winces a few hours later, hopping out of the hole and feeling the uncomfortable tug on his stomach. Nebula and Peter had done their best patching up the wound where Thanos had stabbed him, but it wasn’t a long-term solution, nor a painless one.

He’s hungry enough to eat the nuts in that vacuum sealed bag they’d found in a cupboard and offers Nebula some though she shakes her head and gives them back to him. He saves enough for Peter to have when he wakes up.

He records a message through the helmet of his suit, says, “Take care of the kid for me, alright? He’s the best of us. He’ll survive. He has to.”

He’s not even sure if Pepper, Rhodey and Happy are all still around, or any of the other Avengers—Vision, Bruce, Natasha, Clint. Steve. Thor, wherever he is, whatever he’s been doing.

Thanos won. Strange and the others are dust in the air as the proof of it.

Tony doesn’t have high hopes about the survival of his friends, his comrades, or any of the rest of them.

He should have made sure Peter was safe on the ground, but the kid refused to stay put when he thought he could be helping instead. Part-selflessness, part selfishness, all of it well-meaning and now, absolutely devastating. He should have stayed _put_ , goddamn it.

But then, if Peter were the type to sit and do what he was told, he wouldn’t be the person Tony had unwillingly and uneasily started falling in love with. Not love the way he _should_ love the kid, like a mentor. Hell, not even like a friend, as odd as their friendship might be, a forty-nine-year-old and seventeen-year-old tinkering in an engineering laboratory, watching Star Wars pre-releases in a home theater, fighting black arms dealers and chasing purse snatchers every once in a while, just for kicks.

Love, capital L.

The kind that made it hard to breathe when Dum-E held up an oil can and a rag in his claw, chirping hopefully, and Peter would painstakingly oil every joint while Dum-E preened – and repeat the whole procedure for U, afterward, and Butterfingers after that.

The kind that made him swallow and look away when Peter stumbled out of his bedroom in the morning, sleep still at the corner of his eyes and his t-shirt revealing a smooth, pale strip of skin when he stretched in the middle of the kitchen.

The kind that had him laughing uncontrollably, painful in that way that just makes you laugh harder in an endless cycle of relief because Peter had been covered in his own incorrectly synthesized webbing after an incident in the lab that had had Tony’s heart racing for just a moment.

The kind that had him running his fingers through Peter’s hair afterward, taking too long, far more time than necessary, to help get the webbing out after Peter’s shower, his body still wet where Tony’s borrowed Rolling Stones t-shirt stuck to his skin.

And yes, the kind that made him think about Peter without that shirt on at all, craving Peter’s hand to touch his while reaching for the popcorn on movie night, or the screwdriver if they were in the lab. The kind that had him craving the sight of Peter’s eyes as they light up because he’s figured out something new, had some breakthrough while working. The kind that had him craving Peter’s attention, anything and everything he could get without specifically asking, without pushing, demanding, expecting—

The kind of love he shouldn’t be feeling at all, the kind that made a sick twisting feeling curdle in his stomach when he woke up in the morning after dreams that were all Peter and Tony, clothing optional.

The kind that makes him want to drink, and yet still the kind that kept him from drinking too much, all too aware of what he could do if he forgot why he shouldn’t do it at all, any of it. He can’t end up like his father; bad choices compounded by bad choices ending in a life of alcohol, broken science and strained relationships with everyone who mattered.

He’s never been the best at making good decisions; has a laundry list half a universe wide as proof and that’s not including falling in love with the seventeen-year-old kid currently sleeping in the bed that they’ve been sharing for a little over two weeks now.

The kid with a death sentence hanging over his head because Tony couldn’t figure it out, because all the intelligence in the universe is worth absolute shit when he has nothing to work with and no time to make _nothing_ work after all.

Tony stares out the front of the ship.

It’s dark. Space. Even with the stars in the distance, it’s still incredibly, terrifyingly dark.

He closes his eyes, keeps them closed even when Nebula gently pulls his jacket up and over his torso, unfailingly kind despite the fact that not many have ever been kind to her.

He’s given her a death sentence too; not even she can survive in space forever once the ship stalls and they have no way to keep going.

He couldn’t fix it.

He couldn’t fix anything.

God, it’s cold.

He should get up.

He should get back into bed with Peter.

Keep him warm during their last hours.

Or however long they have left.

He grimaces, after a moment, though it’s been longer than a moment by the ache in his back, the stiffness of his body as he shifts, squinting into the sudden light that’s too bright in front of his face. He puts a hand up, trying to block it out, and then has a moment of confusion, of stunned disbelief.

There’s a woman, glowing like a neon litebrite, floating out in space in front of their ship, looking at him through the ship’s window.

“Great,” he says, throat parched. “I’m hallucinating.”

“You are not hallucinating.”

Tony jumps, metaphorical heart in his throat, as Nebula appears without warning right behind him.

“I have to get you a bell,” he says. Then, “Wait, you’re seeing this too?”

“We should bring her on board,” Nebula says, before the woman disappears from their view and suddenly the ship starts moving, despite the fact that it had been dead in the water just a moment before. Then they’re flying, faster than the ship had been able to even before it had run out of power. Tony braces himself on the pilot’s chair as he struggles to stand up.

Peter.

How long was he asleep?

He needs to get to Peter.

He stumbles his way down the hall, smacking into walls and kicking at a box that slides across the floor and into his pathway. He pushes open the door to Peter’s room and falls in, catching himself only for a moment before the ship lurches and he hits the bed, slamming into it.

“Peter,” he croaks, and has to clear his throat as he climbs up the bed.

Peter’s skin is cold but not frozen, and he’s breathing tiny little gusts of air, his chest moving incrementally slowly against Tony’s hand when he places it over Peter’s sternum.

Alive, and breathing, and with some sort of luck Tony’s not going to question just yet, maybe, just maybe, he’ll stay that way. Tony leans in, pressing his forehead against Peter’s, closing his eyes. His hands are still shaking, and he can’t bring himself to move for a good few minutes.

Finally, he gets up and heads back out to where Nebula is at the controls of the ship, looking at the guidance system, tracking the ship’s location and progress.

“What’s up, Blue?” Tony asks, clapping his hands together.

They’re still shaking. He’s not sure they’ll ever stop, at this point.

“We’re heading in the direction of your home planet,” she says. Then, she looks up at him, face unreadable. “Very quickly. We should be there within hours.”

Tony startles, taken aback. Hours? _Hours?_ They’d been days away from the nearest planet and that definitely hadn’t been Earth.

“Who is this woman?”

“I don’t know. But I am glad she’s here.”

Tony looks up at Nebula again, then smiles, just a little. Nebula nods at him before turning back to the control system. “I wish for you both to survive,” she says, after another moment, then stays quiet.

Tony nods and sits back down.

“Yeah, I wish for you to survive too. More than that. I want you to really live. Me and the kid, we’ll show you around Earth. It’ll be fun.”

He can almost hear the smile in her voice when she says, “Yes. That sounds fun.”

In the end, it takes fourteen hours, give or take a few minutes, to get back to Earth.

Tony forces Peter to wake up, groggy and weak as he is, when the ship lands—when their mysterious savior places the ship down—on the front yard of the compound. At least she clearly knows what’s going on. More than Tony, anyway. Peter hangs onto Tony for balance, with Nebula walking carefully behind them, body tight like she plans to leap forward at any moment—to protect them from unseen foes or keep them from tripping over their own feet, Tony’s not sure. Either way, he’s grateful.

“We’re home,” Peter mumbles, the ship bay doors opening in front of them. He tilts forward and Tony catches him, more carrying him than anything else.

“Yeah, we made it,” Tony says. The pain in his stomach is screaming at him. “Come on kid, work with me here. You’re not exactly light.”

“I knew you’d get us home,” Peter keeps mumbling, and the smile in his voice is as obvious as the damn sky is blue. Tony’s stomach clenches.

“Wasn’t me.”

Then, out of all the people in the world, the _one_ person he hadn’t been expecting to show up starts running toward them, the compound entry doors slamming shut behind him, even as Pepper and Rhodey come running out after him, and figures that might be Natasha and Bruce running behind _them_.

Steve, of course, reaches them first.

“Tony,” he breathes, eyes searching Tony’s face for something. What, Tony couldn’t guess. An answer, maybe. Some sort of a, “Gotcha! We beat the bad guy!” Tony almost laughs, the ridiculous idea of it bubbling up in his throat.

It’s Peter stumbling again that keeps the laughter at bay. Steve takes half of Peter’s weight instantly, and Tony grits his teeth but doesn’t stop him from helping, not now, not when Peter is shaking like a leaf and Tony’s not much better.

Pepper gets there next, and she barely slows down before she’s grabbing Tony and pulling him into an embrace. He sinks into it, holding her back, and smiling into Rhodey’s shoulder when he joins the impromptu group hug a moment later, saying, “Knew you weren’t gone. You’re too damn stubborn.”

Tony thinks he might have cried if he hadn’t been so exhausted.

They all stumble into the compound together. Before Steve can open his mouth to start asking questions about what happened—and Tony can see it on his face, knows what’s coming—Tony points at Peter and says, “Medical, now. Something’s wrong with him.”

Peter, perceptive despite his state of half-hibernation, says, “Mr. Stark too. He was stabbed.”

Nebula steps forward as well. She says, “I will go where they go. Do not attempt to stop me.”

Not even Steve’s about to argue with an angry blue cyborg just to antagonize Tony, apparently, and they’re shuffled up to the medical wing of the compound without resistance.

“There aren’t any doctors on staff,” Pepper says, once they’ve gotten Peter into a medical bed. He looks like he might fall back to sleep any moment, and Tony snaps at everyone, anyone, to turn the heat up and fetch him as many blankets as they can find.

Peter protests, weakly, “I’m okay. I feel better already, honest.”

Tony huffs. “And _I’ll_ feel better when you don’t look like death warmed over.”

Bruce comes in after them, nods at Steve to run and grab the blankets. F.R.I.D.A.Y. is taking care of the heat and sounds relieved to have her boss back on Earth, safe and mostly sound. Peter mumbles out a thank you, and then yawns in Bruce’s face.

“I’ll do what I can,” Bruce says, and looks at Tony. He’s valiantly ignoring the kid yawning in front of him, tugging out a stethoscope to get started.

Tony leans backward onto his own medical bed, everything going just a tad blurry. He vaguely hears Nebula say, “They will need sustenance. It has been some time since they have eaten.”

He feels someone poking at his stomach, but before he can answer any questions, the world goes soft white and he doesn’t hear anything else.

When he wakes up—the sun poking itself rudely through the blinds, which is a bit like déjà vu to be honest—the first thing he sees is Nebula sitting ramrod straight on a hospital cot in the corner, legs folded underneath her. She’s talking, Tony blearily notes, to a raccoon.

Clearly, Bruce gave him the good drugs.

He struggles to sit up, attempting to shake the drugs off, only for someone to gently push at his shoulder and say, “Tony, Jesus, just lay down. Why are you trying to get up already?”

“Hey, Platypus. What’s happening?”

He takes a second to glance around the room. It’s clearly a room down in medical at the compound, Nebula in one corner with the raccoon on her cot, and another bed across from Tony’s. Peter is sleeping, hooked up to a machine that’s monitoring his heart, his blood pressure. There’s an IV taped to his wrist, likely the same type they’d developed for Steve back when the Avengers were fully operational.

“You’re what’s happening. Spaceship in the front yard. If the U.N. didn’t have bigger issues to deal with right now, you’d have been arrested already.”

“Yeah, that sounds like the waste of resources they’d usually jump for. Who all is gone?”

Rhodey sits back with a long sigh, giving Tony a look that’s just as long. Measured. Rhodey wasn’t stupid—he’d known the question would be coming.

“Just about half of everyone we know. Pepper and Happy are safe. Rogers, Romanoff, Barton. Barton’s family disappeared though. All of them. Bruce is here. Barnes is gone. Wilson’s gone. Maximoff is gone. Vision didn’t make it.”

Tony winces at the mention of Vision. God _damn_ it.

“The whole S.I. board is half-and-half. My mom’s alright. Pissed as all hell at you but that’s normal.”

Tony shifts awkwardly on the bed. “Bet you I’m still her favorite.”

“In your dreams, Tony.”

There’s a short pause. Tony can hear the racoon derisively describing nuclear physics to Nebula over in the corner.

“The, uh,” Rhodey glances at the other bed, at Peter, grimacing, “kid’s aunt is gone. We checked when you got back. He have any other family?”

Tony shakes his head, and Rhodey nods, already having known the answer.

“Well, he has that room you set up for him here. He can stay there once he wakes up.”

Tony nods. He wants to roll over and hide in his hospital bed, exhausted and pained by the knowledge of everyone that’s gone. Everyone he failed when he couldn’t stop Thanos in time. He runs a hand down his face and looks across the room at Peter.

The kid wouldn’t handle his aunt being gone well; he’s dreading when Peter wakes up and asks for her, knows he’ll be the one to tell Peter what happened. But until then, he has more catching up to do.

Tony gestures to the tablet on the edge of the bed. “That mine?”

Rhodey snatches it up before Tony can try.

“As if. This is mine. I still have a job, you know. There’s been a few riots, a lot of martial law situations, too much looting with the expected side-effects. The military is trying to keep the peace, but we’re at half-pop. It’s a mess out there, Tony.”

“Yeah, so give me a damn tablet and I can help.”

“No. You’re going to stay in this bed and keep healing, no tablet, no phone, nothing. That hole in your chest is nasty and Cho isn’t around to fix it.”

Tony could probably manage to do it himself with her equipment—or Bruce could—and he raises an eyebrow to that effect. Rhodey rolls his eyes. “Seriously, Tones. Stay put. Rest before you keel over. It won’t help the kid any if he wakes up and you’ve bled out after pulling your goddamn stitches.”

“Bruce gave me stitches?”

“You know what I mean.”

Tony sighs and lies back. His chest is twinging, but not horrifically so—but then again, Nebula is still chatting with a raccoon in the corner, so something has to give.

“The raccoon,” he starts, and Rhodey brings a hand up to rub at his temples.

“Yeah. I don’t know. Just go with it.”

Well, at least if Rhodey’s seeing it too then it’s not because he’s hallucinating again. Good to know.

The raccoon, apparently having heard them, has stuck his middle finger—paw?—up and stated, loudly and without looking at them, “Not a whatever you just called me. Assholes.”

Tony, for once, isn’t sure what to say to that. Rhodey shrugs and stands up.

“I need to do some work. Get some more rest, Tony. Pepper’s coming by in twenty. Happy too.”

Good. Pepper’s always eager to make Tony work; all the paperwork she can get out of him while he’s stuck being bedridden will be her idea of Disneyland. It won’t be the kind of work he’d prefer to be doing, exactly, but Rhodey’s not entirely wrong about needing to give his injuries time to heal.

Besides, it’s not like he’s willing to leave the kid just yet.

He looks across the room towards Peter.

Peter’s still sleeping, one arm flung off the mattress and the blankets haphazardly arranged and piled over him. Tony can barely see his hair sticking out. He can’t see Peter’s chest rising and falling with every breath, but he can see the ticks on the machine next to the bed keeping track of his heartbeat—slow, but not too bad, considering.

Nebula gets up from the corner and the racoon takes off through the door.

“His name is Rocket,” Nebula says when she stops next to Tony’s bed. She’s staring down at him. “He is angry and rude, but he… was a friend of my sister’s.”

Ah. Well, what is he supposed to say to that?

“Right,” he manages. Nebula nods, and jerkily sits back down in the chair next to the bed that Rhodey had just vacated. She’s still refusing to leave him and Peter then. Tony won’t lie and say that’s not at least a little reassuring. She wouldn’t let anybody get to the kid. Or to him for that matter. She’s stubborn and violent enough to even give Steve a run for his money if need be.

Pepper does eventually visit, and Tony was right—she brings paperwork with her, all of it e-loaded onto a tablet she gives to him with the stipulation that he not go crazy with it. He promises, with no real intention of bothering to keep said promise, and she sighs like she knows he’s a liar but gives it to him anyway.

“I’ve already organized a couple hundred relief funds and emergency shelters throughout the states,” she starts, and they spend the next couple hours working out how they can help a broken world stop from falling even further apart.

He wakes up not remembering having fallen asleep for the third time, his allocated tablet suspiciously absent now that Pepper’s left. He sighs and winces as he sits up. The room’s lights have been dimmed and a glance out the window clearly tells him that it’s past dinner time. Nebula is curled up in her chair, looking like some sort of softly breathing blue pretzel.

“Mr. Stark?”

Tony’s head snaps over to Peter, who struggles to push himself up from beneath the mountain of blankets he’d been supplied with. “Peter?” he answers, and damn his injuries, he swings his legs off the bed and only winces at the cold tile beneath his feet. He sits down in the chair next to Peter’s bed, not quite a collapse but something close to it.

“You’re okay?” Peter asks, watching him with wide eyes. He’s pushed half the blankets off enough that they’ve slipped into a pile on the floor on the other side of the bed.

“I’m fine,” Tony says. “How are you feeling? Still cold?”

“I’m okay. Kind of warm now. How many blankets did they think I needed?”

“Good question,” Tony hums, taking a look. Somebody had to have gone looking for every spare they had at some point while he and Peter had both been out like lights.

Despite saying he felt warmer, Peter’s shoulders suddenly draw up tight as his entire body shivers.

“Sorry,” he mutters, “I guess I’m not that warm yet. Can you—” Peter coughs, and his face goes red from the strain.

“Kid,” Tony says, heart in his throat, “breathe. Come on.”

Nebula, apparently not as asleep as Tony’d been led to believe, sits up in her chair and asks, “Should I retrieve Banner?”

Tony’s, “Yeah,” and Peter’s, “Oh my God, no!” come out at the same time. Tony blinks, and Peter, face still red, continues, “I just coughed. I’m fine. I. I’m fine.”

His vitals look alright on the machines, Tony notes, and Peter has stopped coughing. Slowly, he nods.

“Alright, but you’d better speak up if you can’t breathe or something. I’ll take the suit back.” He wouldn’t, not really. It’s an empty threat and Peter knows it. The kid grins and says, “Which one? I’ve got two now.”

Tony sighs. “Yeah, yeah. The Iron Spider was _going_ to be a birthday present.”

“That’s okay. Early presents are the best.”

“It got pretty damaged in the fight. I’ll have to fix it up for you.”

“Can I help?”

“You think you’re ready to play around with nano tech?”

“I mean… yeah. If you’ll teach me how. Or I could just experiment—”

“Yeah, no. Not happening. Remember when you set my lab on fire? Please tell me you remember when you set my lab on fire.”

“It was an accident! And Miss Potts said you’ve done it dozens of times!”

“That’s different. It’s my lab.”

“That’s—you gave me my own workstation!”

“A workstation. In _my_ lab.”

Oddly enough, it isn’t Bruce that shows up next. Tony’s been expecting him to come in and start doing his “I’m not that kind of doctor,” thing since Peter woke up and fell asleep all over again. It isn’t even Steve, though Tony doesn’t doubt he’s somewhere nearby waiting for his chance to talk. Instead, it’s Miss LiteBrite—Carol Danvers, an old pal of Fury’s apparently—all dressed down in pair of what Tony vaguely thinks might be a pair of Rhodey’s sweats and what is definitely one of Rhodey’s _Air Force_ supplied t-shirts that he never lets Tony steal despite every effort (and heart-felt promise not to spill oil or coffee on them _or_ singe them with a blowtorch).

“Hey,” she says, quietly, he assumes so that she doesn’t wake up Peter. “I know you’re still healing, but we really need to start working on a plan of attack. Anything you three can tell us about what happened out there, we need to know.”

Tony sighs, running his free hand along his chin. He needs to shave. Hell, he needs a shower and about twelve hours relaxing his too-tight shoulders and the delicate-in-his-upper-forties-lumbar-region in the jacuzzi before he can deal with—with all of this _saving the world_ bullshit. He tightens the hand that’s holding Peter’s, their fingers entangled, just enough that Tony can feel him, warm and holding steady. His palm is sweaty, both of their palms are, but he can’t really bring himself to care.

“Don’t you get it?” he asks, and he hates how defeated, how angry, his own voice sounds. “We lost. What plan of attack? It’s over. We _lost_.”

She glances at Peter, at Tony and Peter’s hands. “Not everyone is gone. We can still do something. Maybe even get Thanos to undo what he did.”

Tony stares bleakly down at Peter. The kid had fallen asleep with the words _Can you touch me, maybe? Just until I’m asleep? I think I’ll feel warmer_ , and Tony had taken Peter’s hand, rubbing his thumb against the skin of Peter’s wrist. Nebula had watched but hadn’t said a thing, her face eerily blank of whatever she’d been thinking. She’d taken one of the thin grey medical blankets and slipped it around Tony’s shoulders eventually.

She’s watching the conversation between Tony and Danvers carefully now. Her hand is suspiciously close to the dagger Tony knows she keeps in her thigh holster.

Before Tony can say anything—either in response to Danvers or to discourage Nebula from maiming anyone—the doors to medical slide open again. Bruce and Steve both walk in, Bruce with a resigned sort of air in a rough contrast to Steve’s more determined amble.

Tony himself feels exhaustion slip over his shoulders like a physical force pushing down on him. He needs to get up; to take this conversation somewhere else. Somewhere Peter doesn’t have to be a part of it, doesn’t have to be woken up by the inevitable arguing. Tony knows himself pretty well; there’s no way he’s getting out of a friendly chat with Steve Rogers without giving as good as he gets.

But he doesn’t want to leave. He doesn’t want to talk to them about what happened; about how he failed, him and Peter and everyone else, and half the universe has to deal with the consequences. He doesn’t want to be the one who has to get it through all their thick skulls. They _lost_.

And he needs to be here, to keep Peter safe. He doesn’t even want to let go of the kid’s hand long enough to get back into his own damn bed. Not that Tony could protect Peter right now even if he had to. He’s worthless; the suit is in practical pieces and his chest feels like someone stuck a broken metal shard through his guts and ripped it back out.

“Tony, we need to talk,” Steve says. He sounds somber, somehow, his voice pitched low maybe in deference to Peter, and yet Tony can still hear the self-righteous impatience in his words and tone.

“Let’s take this to a different room.” He stands up, wincing from the full-body ache sourced from the combination of his still-healing injury and sitting in the chair next to Peter’s bed for so long. He doesn’t exactly regret it, but his body sure does.

Bruce sighs and moves to the other side of Peter’s bed. “Don’t keep him, Steve. I need to have a look at his wound again soon.”

Steve glances down towards where Tony’s stomach is bandaged beneath his robe and nods shortly. 

Tony gently pulls his hand away from Peter’s, making to leave the room with Steve where they’ll be able to argue as much as they want without waking the kid up. The problem, however, is that the moment Tony pulls away, Peter mumbles in his sleep and shoots his hand up, wrapping his grip around Tony’s wrist tightly.

Tony looks to his face, scrunched up in discontented sleep, but still very much asleep despite the too-tight grip on Tony’s wrist. He hesitates, testing Peter’s grip by tugging his wrist again. Peter mumbles again, words unintelligible, turning his face. Tony can’t tell what he’s saying, but he can guess the general idea: he doesn’t want Tony to leave. The tightening grip if nothing else gets the message across.

Bruce is looking from Tony to Peter’s grip on his wrist with concern.

Nebula steps forward, abruptly reminding everyone that she’s been in the room the entire time. She looks at Tony and says, “Stay with him. I will go with these people and answer the questions they have.”

Steve shakes his head. “I appreciate the offer, Miss, but we really need to talk to Tony.” He looks at Tony with a soft frown.

“That’s too bad,” Nebula says, her voice smooth and nearly coy, like she’s suddenly having fun. She takes the knife out of her thigh holster, delicately holding it front of herself, running her finger along the edge as if admiring the workmanship. “Tony won’t be going with you. Peter has staked his claim and they will not be separated.”

Other than the odd way Nebula has of explaining the situation, Tony blinks at her calling him by his first name. He thinks it’s the first time. He sits back down with a quiet thud, and as if Peter knows, the grip on his wrist loosens, leaving nothing but a bright white line in his skin where he’d been holding on so tightly.

Steve looks at him, eyebrows furrowed like he’s about to argue, but it’s Danvers who says, “Let’s hear what she has to say.” She pauses, cocking her head to look at Tony. “Stark, you should get to bed. Get some sleep.”

Tony nearly scoffs. He waves them off instead, telling Nebula, “Thanks,” when she gives him a short nod as she leaves, still twirling the dagger in her hand, a silent threat. She tells him, “I will be back soon. Do not leave this room.”

Tony shakes his head bemusedly, and turns back to Bruce once everyone else has left.

Peter cracks his left eye open, and then his right.

“Are they gone?” he mutters.

Tony huffs out a laugh, and Bruce chuckles.

“You were awake the whole time?” Bruce asks, looking at Peter’s vitals on the machine.

“Just since Mr. Stark stood up, I think? But only, like, sort of. I’m still really tired.”

“Better or worse or the same since you were on the ship?”

“Oh,” Peter blinks, slowly. “So much better. I’m hungry too.”

Bruce smiles, writes something down on a pad he pulls out of his pocket. “I’ll get you something to eat when I leave. For now, I need to take a look at Tony. Can you let him go?”

Peter abruptly lets go of Tony’s wrist with a surprised, “Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

“You saved me, kid,” Tony says, meaning every word. “I wasn’t looking forward to that conversation.”

Peter grins lopsidedly and adds, “Nebula really saved you.”

Tony pats Peter’s shoulder as he gets up again, ignoring the pain in his chest. “True. I’ll owe her too. If she doesn’t kill anyone.”

Bruce snorts and shuffles Tony back over to his bed before he checks over the bandaging and the wound underneath it. Tony lets him do his thing, lets him talk quietly about what’s been happening since Tony was gone, filling in some things Rhodey hadn’t mentioned, like the fact that the final battle here on Earth had been fought in Wakanda and King T’Challa is gone, leaving his eighteen-year-old tech-genius little sister as Queen of the country that’s providing a good amount of the current aid relief efforts on that side of the planet.

“You’d like her. You two should talk when you get the chance; I may have told her the same thing,” Bruce tells him as he re-applies the bandaging.

“Yeah,” Tony says, and he doesn’t doubt that he’d have to communicate with Wakanda at some point regardless of his wants. The country is too important these days for Stark Industries not to have business with them.

When he’s finished, he walks back over to Peter who’s been listening with a few interjections the entire time.

“Alright, Peter,” he says, looking serious—and interested. “You’re biology is unique, but from what I can tell, when you’re in extremely low temperatures for long enough, your body begins to adjust for some form of hibernation. Like certain types of spiders. It’s likely meant as a survival technique since your body doesn’t require much food or heat, but the side-effects appear to be pretty severe—the constant need to sleep, for one. I have to assume that if you were cold enough or forewent food long enough you could still die, but we’ll need to perform some more tests to know what your limits are. For now, I’d like you to avoid the cold at all costs.”

Peter stares, nonplussed, at Bruce.

“Okay,” he says, after a long moment. “I can do that. Uh, where’s my aunt? She’ll probably want to know about what’s going on.”

Bruce grimaces, which is about as much as Peter needs to know for the answer to click in his head. Tony struggles to sit up again in a hurry. Peter’s face, softly tired and moderately confused before, looks stricken now. Surprised and in shock, as if it hadn’t occurred to him.

Tony knows that it has; Peter had wondered, on the ship, more than once, if his aunt would still be there when they made it back to Earth. But he’d never seemed very concerned, as though he knew she would be. Like the idea hadn’t been able to take root. 

Like he thought the universe wouldn’t take that from him too.

“Peter,” Tony says, voice breaking a little. “Kid, I’m so sorry.”

“She’s—she’s gone, then? With—with everybody? Because of—”

“Because of Thanos,” Bruce interjects before Tony can even think to take the blame himself. His voice is harsh, and angry.

“This was not anyone else’s fault. No one wanted this except him. You, Tony, Steve, Thor, me—none of this was our fault. We all fought. It’s done. Blaming ourselves won’t bring back the people he took.”

Tony watches Bruce for a minute, and tries not to watch the kid sink into his bed, hands coming up to cover his face.

Bruce sighs. “I’ll, ah. I’ll get you both some food.”

He leaves.

Tony, for better or worse, makes to get back up. Peter stops him with a soft, “Mr. Stark, please don’t get up. I just—I’m just—I’m going to go back to sleep, okay? If—when Dr. Banner comes back—you can wake me up. But just for a bit right now, I—I’m gonna sleep.”

Tony closes his eyes.

“Of course, kid. Go ahead.”

Peter tugs one of his last blankets over his head, and Tony tries, without much success, not to listen to the sound of choked off sobs.

Nebula goes with the others to confront Thanos.

“I will confront my father, and I will kill him,” she says, her voice hard. “He will regret killing my sister, if he regrets nothing else.” On her way out, she adds, “I enjoyed my time with you, Tony. I will come back. We will play table football again.”

“Sure thing, Blue,” Tony tells her, and then smiles when Peter hops out of bed, the most energy he’s shown since before he’d found out about his aunt, to wrap Nebula up in a hug. Nebula, frozen with uncertainty for a moment, eventually, gingerly, hugs him back. She doesn’t seem to quite know where to put her hands, but they figure it out.

Peter mutters something so quietly that Tony can’t hear it, but Nebula nods and says, “I would like that,” before she turns and leaves. Almost everyone else had already bid their goodbyes if they were going to, even Thor who’d come in with a chip on his shoulder and no smile in sight, but said, “I am glad you survived this war, my friend,” and clapped a too-heavy hand on Tony’s shoulder. Bruce was leaving too, regrettably explaining that if it came down to it, their friends might need the Hulk and Tony was nearly completely healed now that they’d been able to safely get Tony into Cho’s machine to speed the healing process.

Rhodey, the last to leave, shrugs when Tony tells him, “Rhodey, you don’t have to go,” and says, “I kind of do. It’s my job to protect you and everyone else left on this planet. We have to try, Tones. Don’t worry. We have a plan, plus we’ve got some pretty big guns along for the ride. Carol, Thor, even Bruce. We’ll be back. _I’ll_ come back, okay?”

He pulls Tony into an embrace, warm and solid and over too quickly, gives the kid a wave, and follows Nebula out the door.

Without Bruce there to glare him into submission, and Pepper too busy with S.I. and all the aid efforts to even bother trying, Tony migrates back to his personal rooms in the compound. He drags Peter with him. Peter is strong enough now that he doesn’t need four blankets or eighteen hours of sleep a day. He’s eating double portions again, digging food out of the compound kitchen cabinets like stale cereal, expired milk and peanut butter on toast might be going out of style.

Tony spends the first night he’s back in his own room working on his tablet, doing whatever he can to help Pepper with the mess Thanos has left them with. He’d been tempted to go to his lab, but the amount of paperwork Pepper has sent him didn’t, in truth, make escaping to his lab to tinker with his suit a viable choice. There are too many parents mourning their children, children who’ve lost their parents and have nowhere left to go, people without husbands, wives, friends—people who’ve been killed in the chaos, jobs that have gone unmanned and too many grocery stores with empty shelves because of it.

It’s a game of dominoes and the whole world seems to be losing.

The whole world is falling apart.

What’s left of it, anyway.

He drops his glasses to the bed, rubbing at the spot between his eyes that feels like the mosh pit of a rock concert in the eighties.

“F.R.I.D.A.Y.,” Tony says, “dim lights.”

The lights immediately dim until the glow of Tony’s tablet is the only light in the room. Giving up, Tony throws the tablet off to the side end table and shuffles until he can tug the sheets over his body as he lays down to get some sleep.

He wonders if the others have reached the planet Thanos is at yet. Glancing at the clock, he knows the answer is no but he can’t help but be worried about Rhodey, about Bruce and Nebula, hell, even Natasha, Clint, and Steve. He hopes they manage it. Maybe they will. Maybe they’ll fix all of his mistakes and bring everyone back. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Hardly likely.

But maybe.

He flips over, shoving his face into his pillow. Another couple minutes later, he groans and turns onto his side, trying to get comfortable.

He could go to the lab, start working on fixing up the suit. He could start fixing Peter’s suit. Either might distract him enough to settle his brain, ease him away from the stress of the world falling apart and Rhodey running off to fight the cause of it out there in the vast expanse of cold space.

There’s a quiet knock on his bedroom door, and F.R.I.D.A.Y. says, the speaker volume kept low, “Peter is requesting entry.”

“Let him in,” Tony answers quickly, sitting up in the dark. “Brighten lights by forty percent.”

Even that much is almost blinding after lying in the dark for—he glances at the clock again—three hours. Still, Peter’s not a fan of bright lights and if he’s coming to Tony in the middle of the night, he doesn’t need sensory discomfort on top of everything else that’s worrying him.

Peter steps into the room, running a hand through his mussed up curls like he’s been rolling around on a pillow for as long as Tony.

“Hey, Pete,” Tony says, quiet. “You alright?”

“Couldn’t sleep.” He stops at the edge of the bed and Tony realizes, suddenly, that this is an awkward position for them to be in. Peter is in baggy basketball shorts and an even baggier t-shirt, an old one with a science pun and too many holes in the material. It hangs off of one shoulder, putting the thinness of his face and neck into sharp relief. Tony, however, doesn’t have a shirt on. He has a pair of thin sweats, thankfully, but it’s the middle of the night; it’s dark and they’re alone and Tony is in his bed, swallowing, achingly aware of the feelings he has for the boy standing at the end of his bed.

The seventeen-year-old biting his bottom lip, darting his eyes around the room, fingers fiddling with the hem of his shirt nervously.

“Peter,” Tony starts.

“Can I sleep with you?” Peter asks, words jumbled together. Before Tony can answer, he stumbles forward another step and adds, “I mean, in here. It’s cold, kind of, and I can’t stop thinking about—about Aunt May and what I’m going to _do_ now, it’s—I just.” He deflates. “It’s just, I can’t sleep.”

Tony, after a second, shifts over just a bit and says, “Climb in, kid.”

Tony’s never been known for making the best decisions, but he’s not enough of an asshole to think he can’t just be the friend Peter needs right now. The last damn person Peter has resembling a responsible adult in his life other than, who, teachers at the school that’s no longer in session? Parents of friends who may or may not still be around? The owner of that sandwich bodega he likes to practice his terrible Spanish on?

He’s in love with him. Tony can control his damn reactions and not take advantage when Peter is trusting him to just _be there_ for him. The kid just lost his aunt for God’s sake, just recovered from his biology playing havoc with his body, from a violent, horrifying fight on an apocalyptic planet in _space_ that they ultimately _lost_.

He can keep his hands to himself. He’s not worried about it, even if it makes his heart stick in his throat to be so close to him knowing that it’s wrong, that he shouldn’t even want, and knowing that the kid trusts him not to want the things that Tony wants.

Peter climbs in quickly, shoving his feet beneath the sheets. “Thanks,” he says, the relief in his voice clear.

“No problem, Peter. Try to get some sleep.” There’s space enough between them, but Peter shifts under the bed until one of his legs presses against Tony’s.

Tony closes his eyes and tells F.R.I.D.A.Y., “Lights out,” without letting his voice break.

Of course, Peter doesn’t make it easy on him.

“Mr. Stark,” he says, slow and hesitant. Tony opens his eyes, angling his head without thinking so that he can see the outline of Peter’s face in the dark.

“Yeah?”

“Thank you.”

“For what?”

Peter’s breathing is heavy and loud in the otherwise quiet room. Tony can hear him swallow and shift as he turns onto his side, facing Tony. “Just for being here, you know? For letting me stay here. For—for everything, actually. You—you’re—I don’t know what I’d—”

“You’d have been fine without me,” Tony interrupts. “You’re smart, you’re resourceful, you’re stubborn as hell, you’re brave, you’re strong. I’m sure I could keep going but you get the picture.”

“Those are all good things, right?”

Tony huffs out a laugh. “Yeah. Yeah, those are all good things.”

“Well, they’re all things true about you too.”

Tony can’t help but scoff, and he rubs at his cheek. God, what a night this is turning into. “I’m smart, I’ll give you that, though I prefer genius. Resourceful, sure. I’ll claim it. But brave? Strong? You’d have me beat every time, kid.”

“You—” Peter sounds shocked, and Tony frowns at him. “You’re brave! And strong! I—the things you’ve been through, and what you do—you’ve saved so many people—saved _me_ —and you just, keep going, and that’s—that’s amazing, how strong you are, I can’t—”

“See,” Tony says, throat stuck, “that we might have to disagree on.”

He swallows when Peter moves, sitting up and leaning forward, so goddamn close he’s practically right above Tony, nearly on top of him. He’s so close that Tony can see his eyes in the dark, the hard look Peter is giving him.

“You are,” he says, and doesn’t try to qualify it with anything at all. Just _you are_. Like that’s all there is. Like Tony should just believe it because Peter does.

“I—” Peter starts, and then stops. His wrist brushes Tony’s side, skin-to-skin. Something happens on his face; it’s too damn dark to see, and then Peter’s too close, and Tony has frozen where he's lying still in the dark, surrounded by Peter’s heat, his whole body hovering over him, and then suddenly—

Peter is kissing him.

His mouth is soft. Tentative. Dry and chapped, the taste of dark chocolate on his lips betraying what he’d been doing before he’d given in and come to Tony’s room. Tony hasn’t closed his eyes, his body still frozen in shock, but Peter’s eyelids fall shut as he, somehow, pushes even closer to Tony, pressing their bodies together from mouth to ankle, a long line of hot heat and soft pressure in the dark.

Peter is kissing him.

With trembling hands, he reaches up to touch Peter’s hips through his shorts just to hang on. Peter’s mouth shifts against his, a breadth of a moment to get air into their lungs. Peter dips back down before Tony can even think of what to do, what to say. Their noses brush, and then their mouths meet again, and Tony surges forward, one hand sliding up the dip of Peter’s back beneath his shirt and pulling him closer.

He’d sworn to himself he wouldn’t do anything, but the thought that Peter might be the one to start things had never occurred to him.

And by God, he’ll deal with the consequences later when Peter isn’t covering him with his own body, when the sound of their harsh breathing and soft moans isn’t ringing in his ears.

“Peter,” he gasps into the quiet the next time they come up for breath. Peter’s cock is heavy between them, nudging Tony’s thigh as they begin to rock against one another, pushing and demanding the other each get closer. Neither Peter’s shorts nor Tony’s sweats are able to hide the state they’re in, both made of thin material that might as well not be there at all.

“Please,” Peter’s voice breaks. He sounds out of breath. Desperate. “Please, Mr. Stark, _please_.”

Tony would ask _please what?_ but the insistent hardness between Peter’s thighs makes it obvious enough what Peter needs, or at the very least, what he wants. Tony uses a sudden burst of adrenaline-fueled strength to bodily shove Peter up and shift his hips just enough that when Peter ruts against him, their cocks rub right up against each other.

Tony drops a hand, and then both, cupping Peter’s ass with both palms, pushing him forward in a rhythmic pattern that makes them both gasp and arch in time with Peter’s movements. Peter’s entire body is shaking, but his fingers are trembling where he’s trying to hold himself up to get a better angle. His hands slip against Tony’s chest, catching on a nipple. Tony’s eyes nearly roll back in his head just from the sound of Peter’s soft, aching cry as he shoots off in his shorts, twitching hips and cock and body as he sucks in breath after breath.

Tony bucks up one, two, three more times. He slides a hand up one of the legs of Peter’s shorts and Peter whines, shuffling forward just enough that Tony’s cock can push fast and hard between his cheeks, shorts and sweats in the way but in the end have no chance against how badly Tony wants Peter, how goddamn hot the kid is against him, every touch, every noise. Tony comes, clinging to Peter desperately with enough force that were Peter anyone else, there might be bruises in the morning.

Peter lays on top of him, afterward, all energy gone. He’s breathing into Tony’s neck. He mumbles something, but Tony can’t understand him.

He stares at the ceiling, though it’s still dark enough he can’t see much of anything, as his rapid heartbeat begins to slow.

Somehow, they both fall asleep.

Tony wakes up with Peter still sprawled over him. Their bodies are damp with sweat, skin sticking, and he grimaces at the knowledge that there’s dried come in his pants. Not that it matters, not that that’s the thing he should be concerning himself with right now, not when there’s a seventeen-year-old asleep on top of him, so filled with grief that he hadn’t been able to even sleep in his own damn room.

How could he have allowed last night to happen? He could have stopped it at any moment; could have told Peter no. But that’s a lie, really, and what’s the point in lying to himself now? He could never have told Peter no, not if he’d asked for anything less than bringing his aunt back to life and if it was possible, Tony would do that for the kid too.

Peter must be tired still; he doesn’t move or blink or even grumble when Tony squirms out from under him and hightails it out of the bed and into the shower, bypassing the mirror so that he doesn’t have to see the guilt and shame reflected back at him. Just feeling it is enough for the moment, a heavy weight, a sick nausea. He’ll need coffee before he can handle anything more.

He’s in and out of the shower just long enough to clean the come off and run some shampoo through his hair, and then he’s heading down to his lab. Dum-E, U, and Butterfingers excitedly roll over to him from their charging stations when F.R.I.D.A.Y. opens the doors and turns on the lights. Tony takes a second with each before he shoves through, saying, “Move over, Daddy needs coffee,” and heads for the coffee machine. Two buttons and a minute-and-a-half later, Tony has a mug of hot black coffee, no sugar, and he’s sitting at his desk, keying up the project files for his suit.

He drowns himself in the work, diving into it headfirst until he can stop thinking about Peter. Peter, who’s still upstairs in bed. About the feel of his skin, his heat. The way his cock had felt against Tony’s own, and the sound of his gasps, his groans, his warm breath as he panted into Tony’s neck and chased his orgasm with single-minded determination.

He changes an outlet; adds a gear. Asks F.R.I.D.A.Y. to pull up a few different specifications before he starts fiddling with the newest model as yet another new design completely. He learns from every battle, particularly the ones he loses. The fight with Thanos was no different.

He hopes Rhodey and the others are still alive, and the thought makes his stomach suddenly churn all over again as he closes his eyes. Rhodey. Bruce, Nebula. Natasha, Clint, even Steve. They were all up there and he’s been thinking about the taste of Peter’s mouth all morning.

There’s no messages yet; Tony thinks they have to have made it there by now.

There’s a sound of metal hitting metal and he spins in his chair to look at the back entrance to the lab.

Peter is full-body flinching, likely from the loud noise that the wrench he’d knocked over had just made. His entrance has gotten the bots’ attention. Just like they had for Tony, they all spin over toward Peter quickly, hoping for attention. Tony needs to edit their programming, but at the same time, he can’t stop the smile that the sight gives him, Peter desperately trying to pat them all at the same time without three arms or falling over.

He loves this kid so much it physically hurts at times.

After another minute, Tony takes pity on the kid and says, “Come on, guys, let the kid go. Back off, come on.”

It isn’t until the bots move away that Tony realizes Peter is wearing one of his shirts, a cat wearing sunglasses that’d he’d bought off a street vendor on a whim one day while in Paris after too many questions about who he was wearing. It’s a soft shirt; Tony wears it more often than he’d ever thought he would.

It looks good on Peter, if just because it’s Tony’s. It only helps that the collar dips at the front and there’s enough skin to be distracting. His gut clenches but he says as casually as he can manage, “Morning, kid.”

“It’s after three,” Peter corrects him, fidgeting as he stands there.

“In the morning?” Tony suggests.

“In the afternoon.”

“Right.”

Of course it was. He loses his sense of time in the lab more often than he’d like, not that he’d ever admit that to Pepper.

“Uh,” Peter starts. He rubs a hand on his chest, right over the cat’s face. Tony’s mouth twitches. “Do you think—I mean, I could help. My suit is pretty damaged too so I just thought, um, maybe… maybe I could help.”

Tony gestures at Peter’s workstation. It’s a desk covered in gears, gadgets, and random Lego pieces. There’s notebooks filled with doodles and schematic designs because Peter hasn’t mastered the concept of holographic design systems just yet and still likes to map out his ideas on college-ruled notebook paper first. There’s also a box of noodles that have been sitting there for too long to be safe.

“Feel free,” he says, and only feels the slightest bit of guilt when Peter nods and sends him a relieved smile, like he’d honestly thought Tony might tell him no.

They work for hours—awkwardly at first before they naturally fall back into the routine of it, tossing ideas around, asking questions constantly, and moving about the lab to get the tools and design materials they need to do their work. The questions mostly come from Peter, though Tony likes to throw a few out there too. Peter sometimes has unique answers—or completely wrong answers that immediately need to be corrected before he sets Tony’s lab on fire again.

Tony must not be paying as much attention as he’d thought, no matter that his eyes keep being drawn toward Peter’s body, the shirt he’s wearing, the long, talented fingers he’s constantly using to fiddle with the electrical wiring on his workstation. The way he focuses by leaving his mouth open, tongue sticking out just the slightest. He’s not prepared or expecting it at all when Peter pushes back from his desk, mutters, “That’s it,” and storms over to Tony’s space, getting right into his face, and asks, “Mr. Stark, can we have sex again? You’re really distracting.”

Tony should say no. He should say he’s sorry about before.

Instead, all he can do is kiss Peter again, all the guilt and shame pushed aside the moment Peter’s close enough for Tony to lift and shove onto the desk, some manila folder of paperwork he couldn’t care less about and a number of wires and delicate machinery he absolutely _should_ care about being pushed to the floor with a clang to make space. Fuck, his mouth tastes just as sweet as it did before, all moist heat and soft searching lips, hands reaching up to tangle in Tony’s hair.

“Oh,” Peter says breathlessly when their mouths part this time, his eyes blown wide with surprise even though he’s the one that started all of this, both just now and the night before. Tony slots himself between Peter’s legs, feeling the way the kid is already hard, already desperate.

“Good?” Tony asks, his voice a rasp. “Bad?”

“Good,” Peter says firmly. “So good. Perfect, actually. I’m—I’ve wanted you for so long that—”

Tony groans and leans his forehead forward, pressing against Peter’s.

“Don’t say that,” he murmurs against Peter’s lips.

“It’s true.”

“I don’t deserve it.”

“Agree to disagree?” and Peter presses forward until they can’t talk, can’t disagree about whether Tony deserves Peter’s affection or not.

Tony loses track of time with how long they kiss, how good Peter feels against him. It’s the way Peter is making little choked off noises every time they come up for air, the way his hips are trying to rock forward and the way his muscles are so tense trying to stop, that reminds Tony that Peter is a teenager about to go off.

He slips to his knees, and before Peter understands what’s happening, he’s already tugging Peter’s sweats down and over his cock. Peter’s entire body begins to shake and he says, “Oh my God,” as Tony wraps his mouth around the head, already wet from pre-come. Peter’s hips jerk forward and Tony nearly chokes at the sudden force of it.

“I’m sorry! Let me, uh,” Peter says, voice strangled, and then he’s grabbing the edge of Tony’s desk so tightly that Tony can almost hear the metal beginning to creak. “Please keep doing that,” he begs, as if Tony had had any plan to stop.

“Sure thing, kid,” he rasps, and then sucks Peter back down, relishing in the taste and feel of him in his mouth. It’s been ages since he’s given a blowjob, and Tony, for all that he loves sex, has always particularly loved pleasing his partners the most.

Especially when he’s already in love with them.

He wants to make this good for Peter; wants to make it something the kid won’t be ashamed or resentful of later.

Peter’s hips are still twitching, despite the kid’s best efforts. Tony can’t hold him still, but he relaxes his throat and tries to move with Peter rather than against him, letting the kid fuck up into his throat in small, rotating thrusts until Peter comes, groaning and holding onto the desk so hard that there are imprints in the metal.

“That’ll be interesting to explain,” Tony says, eventually, and Peter sheepishly slides off of the desk, pulling his sweats up as he goes.

He looks at Tony, then away, then back again. Maybe it’s the energy they just spent, or the fact that they’ve been working in the lab non-stop for hours, but Peter’s stomach growls a second later, causing the kid to flinch.

“Hungry?” Tony asks, though he doesn’t wait for an answer. “I love your shirt, by the way.”

They migrate back upstairs to the main kitchen after Tony stands back up and comes against Peter’s stomach in just a few more rutting thrusts as Peter clings to him and rocks back. Peter is so dazed that he can’t stop staring at Tony’s face, and Tony snorts at him while he pulls a bowl of pudding out of the fridge. Peter flushes red and grabs a microwavable bag of popcorn, getting it ready.

Pudding is Rhodey’s secret go-to when he’s stressed enough to go for sweets, but Tony’s more than willing to eat it for him. They sit on the couch and Tony turns on Netflix, something quiet that doesn’t require too much brain power. Mostly, he watches Peter instead as he settles down on the couch, close enough to Tony that their legs are touching though there’s plenty of space on the sofa for him to spread out if he wants to.

The clock in the kitchen had read _11:42._ It’s hardly late for either of them, but then, it’s been a long, difficult week.

Peter slumps over, bowl of popcorn in his lap, and his entire body leans against Tony’s.

“I tried to say it earlier,” he says, looking at the television, “and you wouldn’t let me, so just let me say it now, okay?”

Any words Tony might have wanted to stay are stuck in his throat. He rubs a thumb gently against Peter’s shoulder.

“I’m glad you didn’t disappear. More than anything. I don’t know what I would have done without you. I don’t think I would have been able to—to keep going, to be—normal. You’re… you make me feel safe, even when I _know_ the world is falling apart and nothing is going to be the same anymore.”

“Peter.”

“I hope the others come back,” Peter keeps going, and Tony tenses up. “I swear I do. But I’m so glad you didn’t go with them, Mr. Stark.” Peter turns his head, hiding his face in Tony’s chest. “I don’t think I can do this without you.”

“Tony.”

Peter looks up, and his eyes are suspiciously red.

“What?”

“I’m in love with you,” Tony says, and it’s both a moment of terror and relief to say it out loud. “I get the feeling you might, at the very least, like me. So you should call me Tony, kid.”

Peter mouths the words _in love with you_ silently as he stares at Tony.

“And just so you know, I’d have never made it back if you hadn’t been with me. I need you too. I shouldn’t; you’re seventeen, for God’s sake. But I do.”

“I—it’s legal.”

Tony almost laughs. “That’s so far from the point I’m not even sure where to start.”

“I’m in love with you too.”

Despite almost expecting the words, Tony’s heart still picks up its pace at the sound of them.

He swallows.

“Good. It’d be kind of awkward otherwise.”

“Will you kiss me again?” Peter asks, shifting up, his eyes sparkling. “Can we just—I want—”

Tony looks at him, looks at his desperately hopeful face.

He still doesn’t know if this is a mistake. If it’ll blow up in his face.

God, he hopes it doesn’t blow up in Peter’s.

“Yeah, kid,” he says. “We can do that.”

He slides a hand into Peter’s hair, and kisses him again, and again, and again, until their mouths are sore and tired and the television has run quiet and all they can do is hold onto one another as they wait for the world to fall apart and pick itself back up.


End file.
